The greatest Norwegian painter you’ve never heard of

Mon 1st Feb 2016

The ethereal landscapes of 20th-century artist Nikolai Astrup get their UK debut at Dulwich Picture Gallery

Nikolai Astrup, Rhubarb, 1911, oil on canvas, 93 x 110 cm

He captured Norway’s fantastical scenery with masterful skill and groundbreaking artistic techniques, and yet Nikolai Astrup has always played second-fiddle to another Scandinavian artist: Edvard Munch. That is, until now. On 5 February, Dulwich Picture Gallery will open the first major UK show of his work, Nikolai Astrup: Painting Norway, with Artists & Illustrators as proud media partners. It's a fittingly dramatic space for the event – the world's first purpose-built public art gallery, created in Regency style by Sir John Soane in 1817.

Although a household name in Norway, Astrup has never achieved the same international notoriety as Munch, despite the fact that, as a student, he was hailed as ‘the great new hope of Norwegian art’. His work is often grouped with neo-romantic painters, but the artist was ahead of his time, experimenting with woodcuts and other printing methods to evoke his lurid pastoral scenes.

The son of a pastor, Astrup was fascinated by the forbidden paganism bubbling beneath the surface of his homeland in Ålhus. In his rugged 20th-century mountainscapes, such as Midsummer Eve Bonfire (1915), he paints carefree couples dancing around bonfire, surrounded by plumes of smoke. It’s art which does not share the bleakness of popular Nordic noir; Astrup’s paintings are filled with lush, vibrant greens illuminated by evening light, with just a subtle haunting of Norwegian folklore. In the nocturnal oil landscape of A Morning in March (1920), the outline of a willow tree forms the upstretched arms of a goblin; in other works, claw-like depictions of mountain edges scrape across the sky.

Eighty-eight years after his death from pneumonia, Astrup is finally emerging from international obscurity to show the world there’s more than one Norwegian painter worth screaming about.